January 25, 2007

Glenn Reminds Us

The point about oil-producing countries is very good: most of them will let the price of crude ease down when they sense that we are getting serious about alternative energy sources for our cars.

Hybrids and biodiesel both sound promising. Ethanol—at least, when it's made of food-grade corn—still makes me uneasy, and I can't quite say why: the idea of turning food into fuel for cars just sounds backward to me.

But anything we can do to bring production of energy inside the States is a beautiful thing.

There was a great show about this very thing on the History channel last night, explaing how much fossil feul it takes to produce different types of alternative fuels, and which resources are the MOST environmentally sound.

Interesting that producing ethanol from sugar cane requires 8 times LESS petroleum product than does production of ethanol from corn.

Also, those "plug-in" super hybrids that people have made? Not saving the environment unless the plug is plugged into an alternate energy source, since it takes as much fossil feul to produce the electricity as is saved on the gas, if not more.

There aren't too many financially healthy electric utilities that could pursue the nuclear power option--the Left saw to that by playing rope-a-dope with them in the 70's and 80's. And little things like 'rate freezes" since. Before the "global warming' hoax, the Left stopped nuclear power in the US while fawning over how great those shoddy plants with no containment in the Soviet Union were.The Left covets utilities as State-run enterprises and a source of jobs. If you think you are paying a lot for energy now, just wait until the Left gets their greedy-little hands on the throttle! The escalating rates will be sold as holy sacrifices to the State--encouraging 'sane' allocation to the masses. Your sacrifice will pay for those who can't pay. And how can you argue when you are talking about a necessity?

Electric utilities can't add nuclear plants to the rate base until the plant is up and running. That means the shareholders pay everything until that point. Interest during construction could easily be $1million/day on a plant of that size. So get out your handy calculators and see what a ten-year delay does to the cost of the plant. And did.

No one has yet solved the basic problems of the nuclear fission process where you have a waste stream you have to deal with for 100,000 years. Let's see that presented as 'holy'. Maybe if some of those $billions being spent on the pseudo-science of global warming was applied to nuclear fusion research, there would be a solution.

About Joy W. McCann:
I've been interviewed for Le Monde and mentioned on Fox News. I once did a segment for CNN on "Women and Guns," and this blog is periodically featured on the New York Times' blog list. My writing here has been quoted in California Lawyer. I've appeared on The Glenn and Helen Show. Oh—and Tammy Bruce once bought me breakfast.
My writing has appeared in The Noise,Handguns,Sports Afield,The American Spectator, and (it's a long story) L.A. Parent.
This is my main blog, though I'm also an alumnus of Dean's World, and I help out on the weekends at Right Wing News.
My political philosophy is quite simple: I'm a classical liberal. In our Orwellian times, that makes me a conservative, though one of a decidedly libertarian bent.